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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25689952">Sword Art Online RE:birth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tetsuya055/pseuds/Tetsuya055'>Tetsuya055</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sword Art Online (Anime &amp; Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:00:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,654</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25689952</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tetsuya055/pseuds/Tetsuya055</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Virtual Reality, the next generation of gaming. Such was the ambition of Kayaba Akihiko, who wanted to replicate the fabrics of the real world in a software. </p>
<p>In 2022, the NerveGear was released, which was known to be the most advanced console in the world. With it also came the closed beta for the first true Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. This was Kayaba's magnum opus as a game developer, and it was called Sword Art Online.</p>
<p>Later that year, on November 6, ten thousand players log into the official servers for the first time, and it will also be their last time doing so.</p>
<p>What began after that was two years of suffering, deceit, betrayal, and turmoil, where players had to overcome the odds and attempt to clear all one hundred floors of Aincrad. Kayaba's desire to convert reality into a virtual world may have been too over the top, because if one died in the game, they also died in real life.</p>
<p>3,853 lives were lost, while 6,147 players made it out but never truly recovered from the trauma. One of them was a young man whose life was turned upside down, it set himself on a path with no return nor redemption.</p>
<p>This is a glimpse into his story.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito/Yuuki Asuna | Asuna</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a fan-made story about Sword Art Online, and this is a non-profit work. Credits to Reki Kawahara, abec, ASCII Media Works, and A-1 Pictures. Please also support the official release.</p>
<p>This story contains explicit content and mature themes. A warning will be placed at each chapter that contains such material, to avoid any unexpected and unwanted triggers.</p>
<p>Thank you for your support.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A glimpse into the future.</p><p>A war between good and evil, between sinners and saints. Can a simple bystander tell which is which?</p><p>Does it really matter who wins? Or was all this fighting for nothing?</p><p>There is one who decides to keep fighting, even though he's no longer sure of the reason why they fight.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A dawn symbolizes a new day beginning and a new chapter in life. The sun gives a warm and comforting glow, and the vibrant colors help in giving off a cheerful yet calm tone. </p><p>Sunrise is most often beautiful when viewed from a beach. The sounds of sea waves calmly clashing against each other, and a cool breeze passing through, it certainly seems like paradise.</p><p>Reality, however, can be quite disappointing. That is, if you can even tell what's real. Will you wake up one morning to find that everything's changed? Or will you continue to sleep and forget about problems that exist?</p><p>The hours have quickly gone by. The sun is setting.</p><p>It is dusk.</p><p>There is a villa on flames.</p><p>Some seem to be making their last stand to defend it, while others seem to be laying siege to it. Every battle is a numbers game, and the odds are certainly in the attackers' favor. They have the whole villa surrounded.</p><p>When it comes to tenacity, though, the defenders are unyielding. If they fail to stop them here now, countless lives will be lost. Deaths of the innocent in a war that simply had no benefit, and took its toll on both sides.</p><p>For one of the men defending, failure was not an option. As the moon rose in the sky, he was still standing, along with others who refused to go silent into the night.</p><p>He was, however, quickly surrounded by the enemy, and had nowhere to escape. Yet still, he refused to give up.</p><p>In a blink of an eye, all those who stood before him fell to the ground at once, cuts covering their chests and necks. The bodies lay there motionlessly, until they turned into small blue crystals, and dissipated entirely.</p><p>In an ironic fashion, only in death were they truly beautiful to behold.</p><p>Meanwhile, the man who had cut everyone around him in a split second fell to his knees. He was exhausted. He knew that he would not last the whole night. </p><p>Using his own blade, a katana, to help himself get back up on his feet, he groaned then returned to a combat stance. Black gloves covered both his hands, but the right one in particular had an emblem on it.</p><p>A slightly opened coffin, with a crude smiling face on it. The lips were oddly thick, as if it was wearing a lot of lipstick. Beside the crude face was a single skeletal arm. This gave off the impression as if the coffin was not just an inanimate object, but had feelings like every other human. It seemed oddly happy, almost in a creepy way, almost as if it was laughing. A laughing coffin.</p><p>The young man stared across the grassy field, and set his eyes on someone with two swords. At first, they seemed to be of the same allegiance, because they both wore black, but it soon became apparent that these two never saw each other on the same side, always opposites. </p><p>The young man grabbed hold of his katana tightly, and the other took a step forward and clenched both of his swords tightly as well. They were dead set on killing each other.</p><p>In a timely manner, a single leaf dropped from a nearby tree and slowly started gliding towards the ground. The two continued to stare at each other, and prepared for what was to come.</p><p>Only one gets to live tonight.</p><p>As soon as the leaf touched the ground, they dashed at each other, and put all their might into their swings.</p><p>The sounds of blades clashing rang all throughout the field. It was over as soon as it began.</p><p>All that remained was a piece of broken metal, perhaps a piece of the sword that was shattered. It simply lay there on the ground, as if with no intent to continue fighting anymore.</p><p>After that, a deafening silence followed.</p><p>Pointless conflict indeed.</p><p>[PROLOGUE END]</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. A New Beginning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It's a day like any other.</p><p>A boy explores the new world, hopeful for the endless possibilities and a chance for a fresh start.</p><p>To him, anything is possible here, and the sky is the limit for what he wants to do.</p><p>Diving head first into a whole new world.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[November 6, 2022 | 2:48 PM]</p><p>The wind was peaceful this afternoon. The smell of morning dew still lingered in the grass, and the clouds covered up most of the sun, so the heat wasn't unbearable.</p><p>People always talk of going to greener pastures, but relaxing in the middle of this grassy field seemed like the most ideal situation to be in.</p><p>That was exactly what one person was doing.</p><p>Brown hair, blue eyes. It was a teenage boy, simply minding his own business. His hair was long, but wavy. It wasn't long enough to cover his eyes, but if he had gel with him, he could certainly make it spike up.</p><p>He had a gray shirt on, with long sleeves. The pants were nothing special, tailored in brown, which was the same color as the boots.</p><p>One could assume he was taking a rest from hunting, but really, he just felt too lazy to do anything.</p><p>Some minutes passed.</p><p>Eventually, he mustered the willpower to sit up and look around. The forest was to the far north, and the road leading back to the Town of Beginnings was to the east, but it wasn't that far away.</p><p>He then held his hands up in his face and looked at them carefully.</p><p>"All this... isn't real?"</p><p>This wasn't the real world, no. Rather, this was all a game, which was all very impressive to him. He dug his hand into the soil and grabbed a handful of dirt. The sensation didn't seem fake in any way. He crushed the dirt in his hand, and he could feel some of the soaked soil stick to his hand.</p><p>Disgusting. He would have to wash his hand later. Still, at least he knew that they somehow programmed all these tiny details into this game.</p><p>That only seemed natural, though. Sword Art Online was marketed as the first true VRMMORPG. The player immersion here was second to none.</p><p>The very next thing he wondered about was whether or not he could feel force in a VR game.</p><p>So he punched himself.</p><p>Not the wisest decision, for sure, and he winced as he stood back up on his feet. While he was gnawing his teeth and regretting all of his life's decisions, he slowly came to a realization and quickly understood that he was overreacting.</p><p>He didn't feel a thing. He just winced and groaned on instinct, but really, the punch didn't hurt.</p><p>"I AM INVINCIBLE!"</p><p>He shouted out loud with no care for who would hear him. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one there. Sure, there are thousands of other people logged into the game right now, but really, what are the odds that another one would be listening to and spying on him?</p><p>Was this a bug? This game was in development for almost a decade, and the closed beta test was months ago. How could the developers not have realized that players couldn't feel pain?</p><p>Of course it wasn't a bug. A VR game where pain could be felt would be a terrible thing to market, and it would be very unsafe. To not completely remove immersion, especially in combat, one could still feel the force of a blow, but it wouldn't hurt in the slightest. It could still faze someone or make them dizzy, but that was a rare occurrence.</p><p>Out of nowhere, he received a notification from the system. A private message from another player.</p><p>Using his right hand, he swiped down and accessed the menu. Here, one could check their stats, inventory, skills, and other settings. Right now, all he focused on was checking out this new message.</p><p>[From: Midoriiii]<br/>
[Subject: finally logged in!]<br/>
[hey, it took me a while to log into the server, but i'm here now! let's meet up at the plaza!]</p><p>The teenage boy stretched his arms outward then took a deep breath. It was time for him to head back to the starting town.</p><p>He began walking east until he found the road that was leading back to the Town of Beginnings. After that, all he did was follow the road all the way.</p><p>It took a few minutes, but eventually he made it back. </p><p>"Unless there's some sort of fast travel here, this is gonna be a walking simulator, that's for sure."</p><p>He mumbled to himself as he continued walking towards the plaza.</p><p>Out of nowhere, a green haired guy tackled him, and as a result, he fell to the ground.</p><p>"Yo, Tetsuya! Sorry for being late."</p><p>Tetsuya, right. That was his own name. One could argue that it was stupid to use his real name for an online username, but there are many other Tetsuya's in the country. It's not like it was something special. At least when people called him, he didn't have to answer to any other weird username.</p><p>The person who just tackled him was a prime example of that. Midoriiii, the username was picked because their favorite color was green. As if the green hair wasn't already a telltale sign of that.</p><p>"Don't just tackle me randomly. We're not in Physical Education class."</p><p>Tetsuya spoke as he scratched his head a bit, a sign of frustration. Midoriiii was quick to offer a helping hand, and helped him get back up on his feet.</p><p>"Aw, come on. You're no fun. We don't feel pain in a VR world anyway."</p><p>Midoriiii was quick to smile and patted him on the back. Tetsuya, meanwhile, was dusting himself off. It was impressive to him that they included this detail too.</p><p>"That doesn't mean it's any less annoying."</p><p>The brown haired male only realized now that the plaza was extremely crowded. Hundreds of people were gathering left and right, forming circles and groups of their own. These people probably know each other IRL, or met each other while queueing up to buy the game.</p><p>"We should probably get going, Tetsu. At this rate, we'll be stuck amongst the crowd."</p><p>"Agreed. Let's go to the nearby field outside the city walls then. So you can get used to the combat."</p><p>With a new goal in mind, the two began to make their way through the crowd, which was easier said than done.</p><p>Especially when Tetsuya bumped into someone unexpectedly. He would've been quick to apologize, until the person he bumped into turned out to be someone he was familiar with.</p><p>"Uh oh."</p><p>"Wait, you… YOU'RE THAT KID WHO SOLD ME THAT CHEAP SWORD FOR TWICE THE PRICE!"</p><p>Midoriiii narrowed his eyes at Tetsuya, and the brown haired male simply shrugged.</p><p>"Seriously, Tetsuya? You're tricking people even here?"</p><p>"Yeah, yeah… I know."</p><p>The person Tetsuya bumped into quickly called his friends over, and they began surrounding the teenage boy.</p><p>"I'll want my money back, bastard."</p><p>Tetsuya laughed a bit before looking what was behind them, and tilted his head a bit, looking confused.</p><p>"Uhhhh… Wait, is that…?"</p><p>Everyone got distracted by this, and turned around to see what it was, only to find out it was nothing strange in particular. When they looked back at Tetsuya, however, he was no longer there.</p><p>Instead, he was running, and shoved people out of the way so as to not slow down.</p><p>"GET HIM! HE OWES ME MONEY!"</p><p>The four men then gave chase, and pursued him nonstop. Meanwhile, the green haired male just stood there and shook his head in disapproval.</p><p>"Alright… Guess I'll just meet you at the hunting grounds then."</p><p>Many things were on Tetsuya's mind right now. In the midst of the chaos of running away from the people that he scammed less than an hour ago, he compiled his thoughts into a list of three.</p><p>1.) He doesn't regret scamming a person for some quick money.<br/>
2.) What he does regret is showing up at the town plaza when not even an hour has passed after the event.<br/>
3.) He could run faster here than he could IRL.</p><p>It was a bit funny how a game made him feel more fit than in real life. </p><p>He was too focused on thinking that he actually ran into a dead end. No alleyway or door leading out of this. Just tall walls of houses that surrounded him. The only way out was the way in.</p><p>Well, it would've been the way out except that the four people who were chasing him had finally caught up. They had him cornered, and he had nowhere to run.</p><p>"Just give me the money back, and we'll let ya go. We might not be able to harm you inside this town, but we sure as hell can drag you outside."</p><p>One of the men smirked as he stepped forward, and the others followed. They began moving in, closer and closer, all with the intent to catch him and trap him.</p><p>Tetsuya still didn't give up though. He kept looking around, and eventually spotted a window high up, covered by a wrought iron, which seemed sturdy enough to hold on to.</p><p>However, it seemed too high up. The window was on the second floor, and no matter how high he jumped, he wouldn't be able to reach it.</p><p>Eventually, the four men jumped in with arms raised, ready to slam him down and trap him so he couldn't run away any further.</p><p>The next few seconds that passed were undeniably unbelievable.</p><p>The brown haired male jumped over them with ease, even doing a front flip in the process. When the four men collided with each other, they quickly turned around and saw Tetsuya literally run up the wall then jump up to reach onto the wrought iron. He then lifted himself up further with ease, eventually getting on top of the roof.</p><p>With a cheeky grin, he looked back down below and waved to the four men, still confused about the events that just occured. He just displayed some unnatural agility in those moments.</p><p>Well, this is a virtual world, so some rules can be easily bent and sometimes broken.</p><p>Being too realistic saps a lot of the fun out of things, so reality is stretched to allow the players to have some fun.</p><p>Not wanting to waste too much time and hoping to get away before they realize what just happened, Tetsuya began running and jumping across rooftops as if it was second nature.</p><p>"I'm beginning to love this world already!"</p><p>He shouted gleefully. How could someone not be happy being here? A world where anything is possible, where the wildest imaginations can come true.</p><p>Tetsuya scaled the tallest building in town, a bell tower which was part of a church. There's an NPC questline to do there, but he thought that he might as well do it later.</p><p>Standing on the top of the bell tower, he looked around and carefully surveyed his surroundings. It reminded him of that one video game franchise where the character can survive a fall from any height as long as they landed in a stack of hay. The second one was pretty good, and the rest were decent, to say the least.</p><p>Fall damage in this game was very minimal, so taking a dive here was safe and wouldn't result in a death. However, much higher heights than this can lead to more catastrophic events.</p><p>He began to lean forward then let gravity take care of the rest.</p><p>Something like this would never be possible in real life. It would be too dangerous. In a virtual world, however, where's the danger now?</p><p>This dive would be an exhilarating experience unlike any other.</p><p>He was diving into this new world with no prior knowledge of it, and he still enjoyed every second of it.</p><p>He spread his arms out and felt like he was flying.</p><p>"WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!"</p><p>He was on top of the world, and nothing could ever drag him down.</p><p>[Sword Art Online RE:birth || Chapter 1 End.]</p>
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